spirit of mischief that they must amuse themselves and their friends,
and they thought this a good way of doing it. There was to be an
introduction giving the history of New York from the foundation of the
world, and the main body of the book was to consist of "notices of the
customs, manners, and institutions of the city; written in a
serio-comic vein, and treating local errors, follies, and abuses with
good-humored satire."

The introduction was not more than fairly begun when Peter Irving
started for Europe, leaving the completion of the work to the younger
brother. Washington decided to change the plan, and merely give a
humorous history of the Dutch settlement of New York.

Let us take a peep into this amusing history. First, here is the
portrait of "that worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has
justly been called), Master Henry Hudson," who "set sail from Holland
in a stout vessel called the Half-Moon, being employed by the Dutch
East India Company to seek a northwest passage to China."

"Henry (or as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a
seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir
Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it
into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and
caused him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses,
the Lords States General, and also of the honorable East India
Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double
chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in
those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant
neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.